In early October a group
of European intellectuals published the impressive and extremely
important 36 theses of conservative
Manifest, which we are republishing today in full:
1.
Europe
is our home.
Europe belongs to us,
and we belong to Europe. These lands are our home; we have no other. The reasons we
hold Europe dear exceed our ability to explain or justify our loyalty. It is a
matter of shared histories, hopes and loves. It is a matter of accustomed ways,
of moments of pathos and pain. It is a matter of inspiring experiences of
reconciliation and the promise of a shared future. Ordinary landscapes and
events are charged with special meaning—for us, but not for others. Home is a
place where things are familiar, and where we are recognized, however far we
have wandered. This is the real Europe, our precious and irreplaceable
civilization.
2. A false Europe threatens us.
Europe, in all its
richness and greatness, is threatened by a false understanding of itself. This
false Europe imagines itself as a fulfilment of our civilization, but in truth
it will confiscate our home. It appeals to exaggerations and distortions of Europe’s
authentic virtues while remaining blind to its own vices. Complacently trading
in one-sided caricatures of our history, this false Europe is invincibly
prejudiced against the past. Its proponents are orphans by choice, and they
presume that to be an orphan—to be homeless—is a noble achievement. In this
way, the false Europe praises itself as the forerunner of a universal
community that is neither universal nor a community.
3. The false Europe is utopian and
tyrannical.
The patrons of the false
Europe are bewitched by superstitions of inevitable progress. They
believe that History is on their side, and this faith makes them haughty and
disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the post-national,
post-cultural world they are constructing. Moreover, they are ignorant
of the true sources of the humane decencies they themselves hold dear—as do we.
They ignore, even repudiate the Christian roots of Europe. At the same time
they take great care not to offend Muslims, who they imagine will cheerfully adopt
their secular, multicultural outlook. Sunk in prejudice, superstition and
ignorance, and blinded by vain, self-congratulating visions of a utopian
future, the false Europe reflexively stifles dissent. This is done, of course,
in the name of freedom and tolerance.
4. We must defend the real Europe.
We are reaching a
dead-end. The greatest threat to the future of Europe is neither Russian
adventurism nor Muslim immigration. The true Europe is at risk because
of the suffocating grip that the false Europe has over our imaginations. Our
nations and shared culture are being hollowed out by illusions and
self-deceptions about what Europe is and should be. We pledge to resist this
threat to our future. We will defend, sustain and champion the real Europe, the
Europe to which we all in truth belong.
5. Solidarity and civic loyalty
encourage active participation.
The true Europe expects
and encourages active participation in the common project of political and cultural life. The
European ideal is one of solidarity based on assent to a body of law that
applies to all, but is limited in its demands. This assent has not always taken
the form of representative democracy. But our traditions of civic loyalty
reflect a fundamental assent to our political and cultural traditions, whatever
their forms. In the past, Europeans fought to make our political systems more
open to popular participation, and we are justly proud of this history. Even as
they did so, sometimes in open rebellion, they warmly affirmed that, despite
their injustices and failures, the traditions of the peoples of this continent
are ours. Such dedication to reform makes Europe a place that seeks
ever-greater justice. This spirit of progress is born out of our love for and
loyalty to our homelands.
6. We are not passive subjects.
A European spirit of
unity allows us to trust others in the public square, even when we are
strangers. The public parks, central squares and broad boulevards of European
towns and cities express the European political spirit: We share our common
life and the res publica. We assume that it is our duty to take responsibility
for the futures of our societies. We are not passive subjects under the
domination of despotic powers, whether sacred or secular. And we are not
prostrate before implacable historical forces. To be European is to
possess political and historical agency. We are the authors of our shared
destiny.
7. The nation-state is a hallmark of
Europe.
The true Europe is a
community of nations. We have our own languages, traditions and borders. Yet we
have always recognized a kinship with one another, even when we have been at
odds—or at war. This unity-in-diversity seems natural to us. Yet this is
remarkable and precious, for it is neither natural nor inevitable. The most
common political form of unity-in-diversity is empire, which European warrior
kings tried to recreate in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The allure of the imperial form endured, but the nation-state prevailed, the
political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty. The nation-state thereby
became the hallmark of European civilization.
8. We do not back an imposed, enforced
unity.
A national community
takes pride in governing itself in its own way, often boasts of its great
national achievements in the arts and sciences, and competes with other
nations, sometimes on the battlefield. This has wounded Europe, sometimes
gravely, but it has never compromised our cultural unity. In fact, the contrary
has been the case. As the nation states of Europe became more established and
distinct, a shared European identity became stronger. In the aftermath of the
terrible bloodshed of the world wars in the first half of the twentieth
century, we emerged with an even greater resolve to honor our shared heritage. This
testifies to the depth and power of Europe as a civilization that is
cosmopolitan in a proper sense. We do not seek the imposed, enforced unity of
empire. Instead, European cosmopolitanism recognizes that patriotic love and
civic loyalty open out to a wider world.
9. Christianity encouraged cultural
unity.
The true Europe has been
marked by Christianity. The universal spiritual empire of the Church brought
cultural unity to Europe, but did so without political empire. This has allowed
for particular civic loyalties to flourish within a shared European culture.
The autonomy of what we call civil society became a characteristic feature of
European life. Moreover, the Christian Gospel does not deliver a comprehensive
divine law, and thus the diversity of the secular laws of the nations may be
affirmed and honoured without threat to our European unity. It is no
accident that the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been accompanied by
renewed efforts to establish political unity—an empire of money and
regulations, covered with sentiments of pseudo-religious universalism, that is
being constructed by the European Union.
10. Christian roots nourish Europe.
The true Europe affirms
the equal dignity of every individual, regardless of sex, rank or race. This
also arises from our Christian roots. Our gentle virtues are of an
unmistakably Christian heritage: fairness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness,
peace-making, charity. Christianity revolutionized the relationship between men
and women, valuing love and mutual fidelity in an unprecedented way. The bond
of marriage allows both men and women to flourish in communion. Most of the
sacrifices we make are for the sake of our spouses and children. This spirit of
self-giving is yet another Christian contribution to the Europe we love.
11. Classical roots encourage
excellence.
The true Europe also
draws inspiration from the Classical tradition. We recognize ourselves in the
literature of ancient Greece and Rome. As Europeans, we strive for greatness,
the crown of the Classical virtues. At times, this has led to violent competition
for supremacy. But at its best, an aspiration toward excellence
inspires the men and women of Europe to craft musical and artistic works of
unsurpassed beauty and to make extraordinary breakthroughs in science and
technology. The grave virtues of the self-possessed Romans and the
pride in civic participation and spirit of philosophical inquiry of the Greeks
have never been forgotten in the real Europe. These inheritances, too, are
ours.
12. Europe is a shared project.
The true Europe has
never been perfect. The proponents of the false Europe are not wrong to seek
development and reform, and there is much that has been accomplished since 1945
and 1989 that we should cherish and honor. Our shared life is an ongoing
project, not an ossified inheritance. But the future of Europe rests in renewed
loyalty to our best traditions, not a spurious universalism demanding
forgetfulness and self-repudiation. Europe did not begin with the
Enlightenment. Our beloved home will not be fulfilled with the European Union. The
real Europe is, and always will be, a community of nations at once insular,
sometimes fiercely so, and yet united by a spiritual legacy that, together, we
debate, develop, share—and love.
13. We are losing our home.
The true Europe is in
jeopardy. The
achievements of popular sovereignty, resistance to empire, cosmopolitanism
capable of civic love, the Christian legacy of humane and dignified life, a
living engagement with our Classical inheritance—all this is slipping away. As
the patrons of the false Europe construct their faux Christendom of universal
human rights, we are losing our home.
14. A false freedom prevails.
The false Europe boasts
of an unprecedented commitment to human liberty. This liberty, however,
is very one-sided. It sells itself as liberation from all restraints:
sexual freedom, freedom of self-expression, freedom to “be oneself.” The
Generation of ’68 regards these freedoms as precious victories over a once
almighty and oppressive cultural regime. They see themselves as great liberators,
and their transgressions are acclaimed as noble moral achievements, for which
the whole world should be grateful.
15. Individualism, isolation, and
aimlessness are widespread.
For Europe’s younger
generations, however, reality is far less gilt with gold. Libertine hedonism
often leads to boredom and a profound sense of purposelessness. The bond of
marriage has weakened. In the roiling sea of sexual liberty, the deep desires
of our young people to marry and form families are often frustrated. A liberty
that frustrates our heart’s deepest longings becomes a curse. Our societies
seem to be falling into individualism, isolation and aimlessness. Instead of
freedom, we are condemned to the empty conformity of consumer- and media-driven
culture. It is our duty to speak the truth: The Generation of ’68
destroyed but did not build. They created a vacuum now filled by
social media, cheap tourism and pornography.
16. We are regulated and managed.
At the same time that we
hear boasts of unprecedented liberty, European life is more and more
comprehensively regulated. Rules—often confected by faceless technocrats in
league with powerful interests—govern our work relationships, our business
decisions, our educational qualifications, our news and entertainment media.
And Europe now seeks to tighten existing regulations on freedom of speech, an
aboriginal European freedom—freedom of conscience made manifest. The targets of
these restrictions are not obscenity or other assaults on decency in public
life. Instead, Europe’s governing classes wish to restrict manifestly political
speech. Political leaders who give voice to inconvenient truths about Islam and
immigration are hauled before judges. Political correctness enforces
strong taboos that deem challenges to the status quo beyond the pale. The
false Europe does not really encourage a culture of freedom. It promotes a
culture of market-driven homogeneity and politically enforced conformity.
17. Multiculturalism is unworkable.
The false Europe also
boasts of an unprecedented commitment to equality. It claims to promote
non-discrimination and the inclusion of all races, religions and identities.
Here, genuine progress has been made, but a utopian detachment from reality has
taken hold. Over the past generation, Europe has pursued a grand project of
multiculturalism. To demand or even promote the assimilation of Muslim
newcomers to our manners and mores, much less to our religion, has been thought
a gross injustice. A commitment to equality, we have been told, demands that we
abjure any hint that we believe our culture superior. Paradoxically, Europe’s
multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on
the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable
form.It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of
self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and
the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a
collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of
peace and prosperity that is being born.
18. Bad faith grows.
There is a great deal of
bad faith in this thinking. Most in our governing classes doubtless presume the
superiority of European culture—which must not be affirmed in public in ways
that might offend immigrants. Given that superiority, they think that
assimilation will happen naturally, and quickly. In an ironic echo of the
imperialist thinking of old, Europe’s governing classes presume that, somehow,
by the laws of nature or of history, ‘they’ will necessarily become like
‘us’—and it is inconceivable that the reverse might be true. In the meantime,
official multiculturalism has been deployed as a therapeutic tool for managing
the unfortunate but ‘temporary’ cultural tensions.
19. Technocratic tyranny increases.
There is more bad faith
at work, of a darker kind. Over the last generation, a larger and larger
segment of our governing class has decided that its own self-interest lies in
accelerated globalization. They wish to build supranational institutions that
they are able to control without the inconveniences of popular
sovereignty. It is increasingly clear that the ‘democratic deficit’ in
the European Union is not a mere technical problem to be remedied by technical
means. Rather, this deficit is a fundamental commitment, and it is
zealously defended. Whether legitimated by supposed economic necessities or
autonomously developing international human rights law, the supra-national
mandarins of the EU institutions confiscate the political life of Europe,
answering all challenges with a technocratic answer: There is no alternative.
This is the soft but increasingly real tyranny we face.
20. The false Europe is fragile and
impotent.
The hubris of the false
Europe is now becoming evident, despite the best efforts of its partisans to
shore up comfortable illusions. Above all, the false Europe is revealed to be
weaker than anyone imagined. Popular entertainment and material consumption do
not sustain civic life. Shorn of higher ideals and discouraged from expressing
patriotic pride by multiculturalist ideology, our societies now have difficulty
summoning the will to defend themselves. Moreover, civic trust and social
cohesion are not renewed by inclusive rhetoric or an impersonal economic system
dominated by gigantic international corporations. Again, we must be frank:
European societies are fraying badly. If we but open our eyes, we see
an ever-greater use of government power, social management and educational
indoctrination. It is not just Islamic terror that brings heavily
armed soldiers into our streets. Riot police are now necessary to quell violent
anti-establishment protests and even to manage drunken crowds of football fans.
The fanaticism of our football loyalties is a desperate sign of the deeply
human need for solidarity, a need that otherwise goes unfulfilled in the false
Europe.
21. A culture of repudiation has taken
hold.
Europe’s intellectual
classes are, alas, among the chief ideological partisans of the conceits of the
false Europe. Without doubt, our universities are one of the glories of
European civilization. But where once they sought to transmit to each new
generation the wisdom of past ages, today most within the universities
equate critical thinking with a simpleminded repudiation of the past. A
lodestar of the European spirit has been the rigorous discipline of
intellectual honesty and objectivity. But over the past two generations, this
noble ideal has been transformed. The asceticism that once sought to free the
mind of the tyranny of dominant opinion has become an often complacent and
unreflective animus against everything that is our own. This stance of cultural
repudiation functions as a cheap and easy way of being ‘critical.’ Over the
last generation, it has been rehearsed in the lecture halls, becoming a
doctrine, a dogma. And to join in professing this creed is taken to be the mark
of ‘enlightenment,’ and of spiritual election. As a consequence, our
universities are now active agents of ongoing cultural destruction.
22. Elites arrogantly parade their
virtue.
Our governing classes
are advancing human rights. They are at work fighting climate change. They are
engineering a more globally integrated market economy and harmonizing tax
policies. They are monitoring progress toward gender equality. They are doing so
much for us! What does it matter by what mechanisms they inhabit their offices?
What does it matter if the European peoples grow more sceptical of their
ministrations?
23. There is an alternative.
That growing scepticism
is fully justified. Today, Europe is dominated by an aimless materialism that
seems unable to motivate men and women to have children and form families. A
culture of repudiation deprives the next generation of a sense of identity.
Some of our countries have regions in which Muslims live with an informal
autonomy from local laws, as if they were colonialists rather than fellow
members of our nations. Individualism isolates us one from another.
Globalization transforms the life prospects of millions. When challenged, our
governing classes say that they are merely working to accommodate the
inevitable, adjusting to implacable necessities. No other course is possible,
and it is irrational to resist. Things cannot be otherwise. Those who object
are said to suffer nostalgia—for which they deserve moral condemnation as
racists or fascists. As social divisions and civic distrust become more
apparent, European public life grows angrier, more rancourous, and no one can
say where it will end. We must not continue down this path. We need to
throw off the tyranny of the false Europe. There is an alternative.
24. We must turn back ersatz religion.
The work of renewal
begins with theological self-knowledge. The universalist and universalizing
pretensions of the false Europe reveal it to be an ersatz religious enterprise,
complete with strong creedal commitments—and anathemas. This is the potent
opiate that paralyzes Europe as a political body. We must insist that religious
aspirations are properly the province of religion, not politics, much less
bureaucratic administration. In order to recover our political and historical
agency, it is imperative that we re-secularize European public life.
25. We must restore a true liberalism.
This will require us to
renounce the mendacious language that evades responsibility and fosters
ideological manipulation. Talk of diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism is
empty. Often, such language is deployed as a way to characterize our failures
as accomplishments: The unravelling of social solidarity is ‘actually’ a sign
of welcome, tolerance, and inclusion. This is marketing language, a language
meant to obscure reality rather than illuminate. We must recover an abiding
respect for reality. Language is a delicate instrument, and it is debased when
used as a bludgeon. We should be patrons of linguistic decency. Recourse to
denunciation is a sign of the decadence of our present moment. We must not
tolerate verbal intimidation, much less mortal threats. We need to protect
those who speak reasonably, even if we think their views mistaken. The future
of Europe must be liberal in the best sense, which means committed to robust
public debate free from all threats of violence and coercion.
26. We need responsible statesmen.
Breaking the spell of
the false Europe and its utopian, pseudo-religious crusade for a borderless
world means fostering a new kind of statesmanship and a new kind of statesman.
A good political leader stewards the commonweal of a particular people. A good
statesman views our shared European inheritance and our particular national
traditions as magnificent and life-giving, but also fragile gifts. He does not
reject that inheritance, nor does he chance losing it all for utopian dreams.
Such leaders covet the honors bestowed upon them by their people; they
do not lust for the approbation of the ‘international community,’ which is in
fact the public relations apparatus of an oligarchy.
27. We should renew national unity and
solidarity.
Recognizing the
particular character of the European nations, and their Christian mark, we need
not be perplexed before the spurious claims of the multiculturalists.
Immigration without assimilation is colonization, and this must be rejected. We
rightly expect that those who migrate to our lands will incorporate themselves
into our nations and adopt our ways. This expectation needs to be supported by
sound policy. The language of multiculturalism has been imported from America.
But America’s great age of immigration came at the turn of the twentieth
century, a period of remarkably rapid economic growth, in a country with
virtually no welfare state, and with a very strong sense of national identity
to which immigrants were expected to assimilate. After admitting large numbers
of immigrants, America closed its doors very nearly shut for two generations.
Europe needs to learn from this American experience rather than adopt
contemporary American ideologies. That experience tells us that the workplace
is a powerful engine of assimilation, that a generous welfare system can impede
assimilation and that prudent political leadership sometimes dictates
reductions in immigration—even drastic reductions. We must not allow a
multicultural ideology to deform our political judgments about how best to
serve the common good, which requires national communities with sufficient
unity and solidarity to see their good as common.
28. Only empires are multicultural.
After World War II,
Western Europe cultivated vital democracies. After the collapse of the Soviet
Empire, Central European nations restored their civic vitality. These are among
Europe’s most precious achievements. But they will be lost if we do not address
immigration and demographic change in our nations. Only empires can be
multicultural, which is what the European Union will become if we fail to make
renewed solidarity and civic unity the criteria by which to assess immigration
policies and strategies for assimilation.
29. A proper hierarchy nourishes social
well-being.
Many wrongly think
Europe is being convulsed only by controversies over immigration. In truth,
this is but one dimension of a more general social unraveling that must be
reversed. We must recover the dignity of particular roles in society. Parents,
teachers and professors have a duty to form those under their care. We must
resist the cult of expertise that comes at the expense of wisdom, tact and the
quest for a cultured life. There can be no renewal of Europe without a
determined rejection of an exaggerated egalitarianism and the reduction of
wisdom to technical knowledge. We endorse the political achievements of the
modern era. Each man and woman should have an equal vote. Basic rights must be
protected. But a healthy democracy requires social and cultural hierarchies
that encourage the pursuit of excellence and give honor to those who serve the
common good. We need to restore a sense of spiritual greatness and give it due
honour so that our civilization can counter the growing power of mere wealth on
the one hand and vulgar entertainment on the other.
30. We must restore moral culture.
Human dignity is
more than the right to be left alone, and doctrines of international human
rights do not exhaust the claims of justice, much less of the good. Europe
needs to renew a consensus about moral culture so that the populace can be
guided toward a virtuous life. We must not allow a false view of freedom to
impede the prudent use of the law to deter vice. We must be forgiving of human
weakness, but Europe cannot flourish without a restoration of a communal
aspiration toward upright conduct and human excellence. A culture of dignity
flows from decency and the discharge of the duties of our stations in life. We
need to renew the exchange of respect between social classes that characterizes
a society that values the contributions of all.
31. Markets need to be ordered toward
social ends.
While we recognize the
positive aspects of free-market economics, we must resist ideologies that seek
to totalize the logic of the market. We cannot allow everything to be for sale.
Well functioning markets require the rule of law, and our rule of law should
aim at more than mere economic efficiency. Markets also function best when they
are nested within strong social institutions organized on their own, non-market
principles. Economic growth, while beneficial, is not the highest good. Markets
need to be oriented toward social ends. Today, corporate giganticism threatens
even political sovereignty. The nations need to cooperate to master the
arrogance and mindlessness of global economic forces. We affirm the
prudent use of government power to sustain non-economic social goods.
32. Education needs to be reformed.
We believe Europe has a
history and culture worth sustaining. Our universities, however, too often
betray our cultural heritage. We need to reform educational curricula to foster
the transmission of our common culture rather than indoctrinating young people
into a culture of repudiation. Teachers and mentors at every level have a duty
of memory. They should take pride in their role as a bridge between generations
past and generations to come. We must also renew the high culture of Europe by
setting the sublime and the beautiful as our common standard and rejecting the
degradation of the arts into a kind of political propaganda. This will
require the cultivation of a new generation of patrons. Corporations
and bureaucracies have shown themselves to be poor stewards of the arts.
33. Marriage and family are essential.
Marriage is the
foundation of civil society and the basis for harmony between men and women. It is the intimate
bond organized around sustaining a household and raising children. We affirm
that our most fundamental roles in society and as human beings are as fathers
and mothers. Marriage and children are integral to any vision of human
flourishing. Children require sacrifice from those who bring them into the world.
This sacrifice is noble and must be honoured. We endorse prudent social
policies to encourage and strengthen marriage, childbearing, and childrearing.
A society that fails to welcome children has no future.
34. Populism should be engaged.
There is great anxiety
in Europe today because of the rise of what is called ‘populism’—though
the meaning of the term seems never to be defined, and it is used mostly as
invective. We have our reservations. Europe needs to draw upon the deep wisdom
of her traditions rather than relying on simplistic slogans and divisive
emotional appeals. Still, we acknowledge that much in this new political
phenomenon can represent a healthy rebellion against the tyranny of the false
Europe, which labels as ‘anti-democratic’ any threat to its monopoly on moral
legitimacy. The so-called “populism” challenges the dictatorship of the status
quo, the ‘fanaticism of the centre,’ and rightly so. It is a sign that even in
the midst of our degraded and impoverished political culture, the historical
agency of the European peoples can be reborn.
35. Our future is the true Europe.
We reject as false the
claim that there is no responsible alternative to the artificial, soulless
solidarity of a unified market, a transnational bureaucracy, and glib
entertainment. Bread and circuses are not enough. The responsible
alternative is the true Europe.
36. We must take responsibility.
In this moment, we
ask all Europeans to join us in rejecting the utopian fantasy of a
multicultural world without borders. We rightly love our homelands,
and we seek to hand on to our children every noble thing that we have ourselves
received as our patrimony. As Europeans, we also share a common heritage, and
this heritage asks us to live together in peace as a Europe of nations. Let us
renew national sovereignty, and recover the dignity of a shared political responsibility
for Europe’s future.
Signers:
Philippe Bénéton
(France)
Rémi Brague (France)
Chantal Delsol (France)
Roman Joch (Czech
Republic)
Lánczi András (Hungary)
Ryszard Legutko (Poland)
Pierre Manent (France)
Janne Haaland Matlary
(Norway)
Dalmacio Negro Pavón
(Spain)
Roger Scruton (United
Kingdom)
Robert Spaemann
(Germany)
Bart Jan Spruyt
(Netherlands)
Matthias Storme
(Belgium)